The present invention relates in general to data recording technology, such as disk drive technology. In particular, the present invention relates to disk drives and a head supporting arm used in the disk drives and the method for manufacturing the head supporting arm.
Conventional head supporting arms include a load beam, a slider including a head or a transducer on its one end, and a flexure including a connecting portion connected to the load beam and a bonding portion bonded to the slider by an adhesive agent. The load beam includes a dimple for generating a gimbal motion between the flexure and the slider. The arms support read/write heads in the hard disk drives.
With the advancement in the media technology, the currently available media are capable of holding a much larger amount of information. With the emergence of high density recording media, new types of recording heads, such as MR and GMR heads, were used to be able to take advantage of the higher capacity of the recording media. The MR and GMR recording heads are more sensitive and easily affected by static electricity and heat. Slider technology is reaching its limits as far as the flying height is concerned. Thus, it should be considered that deformation of the slider occurs due to a bimetal effect between the slider which is made of ceramic and the flexure which is made of stainless steel as thermal changes occurs.
To avoid the above-mentioned problems, an adhesive agent such as thermosetting resin is often used to connect the flexure to the slider. This type of adhesive agents cause less thermal changes after being cured, when using such a thermosetting resin for connecting the flexure to the slider, initially a laser beam is irradiated only at thermosetting resin on for a short period, thereby tacking the flexure to the slider temporarily (laser tacking). This initial step improves the efficiency in the production process. After the initial step, the whole head supporting arm to which both flexure and slider are fixed is heated by placing the assembly in an oven. This last step causes the thermosetting resin to be cured.
Typically, the above described laser tacking process can be used to bond the flexure and the slider in head assemblies that include contact start stop (CSS) type head supporting arms. CSS head supporting arms do not require a merging lip for loading/unloading at the tip of the head supporting arm. However, where the head assembly includes head supporting arms that require a merging lip for loading/unloading, respectively, the above laser tacking process can not be used efficiently. The head assembly includes head supporting arms that require a merging lip for loading/unloading are used in many cases in recent years. This is because the flexure is almost covered by the load beam in these type of arms.
The co-assigned Japanese Patent Application No. 10-370272, discloses a revised technique for enabling a laser tacking process for the head supporting arm having a merging lip for loading/unloading. The revised process disclosed by the Japanese Patent Application No. 10-370272 provides the load beam with an exposure opening for exposing the bonding portion of the flexure to which the slider is to be bonded. Thereafter, the laser beam is irradiated at the bonding portion of the flexure through this exposure opening. However, the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No. 10-370272 can not be efficiently used where the head assembly includes a head supporting arm. The head supporting arm is often employed in the head assemblies and requires the load beam to have an opening used by a limiter that prevents the slider from sliding away too far from the load beam when the head is unloaded from a data recording medium.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a head supporting that enables laser tacking while having a merging lip and a limiter for loading/unloading of the head, as well as a method for manufacturing of the head supporting arm and a data recording apparatus.
The head supporting arm of the present invention comprises a load beam, a flexure including a connecting portion connected to the load beam and a bonding portion, and a slider having a head on its one end and bonded to the bonding portion by an adhesive agent, wherein the load beam has a dimple for generating a gimbal motion between the flexure and the slider. In this head supporting arm, (1) the load beam is provided with an exposure opening for exposing the bonding portion of the flexure bonded at the other end, which is opposite to the one end having the head of the slider, and (2) the limiter formed unitarily with the flexure is extended onto a surface of the exposure opening, which is at the opposite side of a surface where the flexure exists so that the limiter is hooked on the load beam.
The head supporting arm of the present invention enables the exposure opening to be used also as an opening of the limiter for loading/unloading the head, so that the limiter is hooked on the exposure opening. The exposure opening is originally used only for temporarily setting an adhesive made of a thermosetting resin for bonding the flexure and the slider together. Consequently, the laser beam can be irradiated for laser tacking while both merging lip and limiter for loading/unloading the head are present. In addition, because the laser beam irradiation point is positioned away from elements that are affected by the heat, such as a GMR head, the laser beam will not heat such elements. The head supporting arm can thus be configured in simple configuration. In addition, such a configuration of the exposure opening of the present invention would make it possible to eliminate fragile parts from the load beam.
In a preferred embodiment of the head supporting arm of the present invention, the exposure opening is shaped almost like a square, with length of each side of the opening being larger than the bonding portion of the flexure. The limiter is hooked to the load beam on one side of the exposure opening, which is away further from the dimple. In any of the above cases, it is possible to realize a preferred exposure opening that can be used as both the opening for irradiating the laser beam and the opening of the limiter.
In accordance with the present invention, the method for manufacturing the head supporting arm of the present invention includes the following steps: At first, the slider, which is to be put together with the flexure via a thermosetting resin therebetween with respect to the load beam while the limiter of the flexure is hooked on the exposure opening of the load beam, is disposed on the bonding portion. Then, a laser beam is irradiated on the part of the bonding portion from which the flexure is exposed through the opening, thereby causing the adhesive to set so that the flexure and the slider are held together temporarily. Thereafter, the head supporting arm to which both flexure and slider are fixed temporarily is heated in an oven so as to further cure the thermosetting resin. The flexure and the slider are thus bonded together adhesively. According to the manufacturing method described above, the head supporting arm provided with a merging lip and a limiter for loading/unloading respectively can be manufactured at a high yield.
Furthermore, the data recording apparatus of the present invention comprises a data recording medium for recording data and a head supporting arm composed as described above and moved relatively to the data recording medium.